The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard conducted its annual National Leadership Index survey in September and the results are in. 80% of those surveyed say the US is in a leadership crisis. That is up from 77% last year and 65% in 2005. Hmm. Yesterday I talked about getting on board with leadership, to give leaders a chance to succeed but the trend is anything but that. CEO departures are on track to be at the highest rate ever. Yet our society demands near flawless execution. I often hear potential leaders in companies decline to advance because they don’t want the headaches and because they don’t want to fail. Warren Bennis, noted professor at USC, contends there is a leadership meltdown. But if you already knew all this. You work and read the papers and you know what is going on. But it is not like that everywhere.

Marilyn Nelson, CEO of Carlson Cos (operator of TGI Fridays and Radisson Hotels) and a board member of ExxonMobil and US West counters, “ I see many leading with great authenticity…..resisting temptation to take short cuts to provide short term results.” I agree. In the past week I have had two clients tell me, “it doesn’t matter what happens with the economy, we are not cutting back on training and coaching.” Today, a client quoted to me the amount of money he has spent with FireStarter in the past two years (I already knew the number – a big one!) and asked me what more we could be doing. He has seen the results and wants to do more.

I am not telling you this to brag. I am telling you this because in a society where confidence in business leaders is at its lowest point in recent history there are people who are leading and leading well. There are people who are not content with the status quo. There are people and firms proactively investing today to insure a better tomorrow. This is not easy. It takes time, money and work – hard work, to create a better future- and it is being done.

The questions you must now answer are these – Are you one of those people investing time, money and effort to create a better future for yourself?

Are you leading your team with integrity, authenticity, trust and respect so that you all can have a better future?

If not, what are you going to do about it? If so, are you on track and how will you maintain the effort?

Stay inspired..

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 5:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.